Projects
Islam and contemporary world literature KU Leuven
This is the provisional title of a research monograph under contract with Edinburgh University Press. The project seeks to demonstrate how religious referents related to Islam and the Muslim world in literary writings by authors from both Muslim and non- Muslim backgrounds can be employed as a finely mazed instrument for analyzing cultural- religious belongings, grounded in individualized interpretations of Islam. This project was conceived ...
RELIGION AND IMAGINATION: ISLAM AND CONTEMPORARY WORLD LITERATURE KU Leuven
Sabbatical Annemarie C. Mayer: Between Cross and Half Moon:Raimundus Lullus' Theological Relation to Islam KU Leuven
During my sabbatical"Between Cross and Half Moon" I shall focus on writing a major English monograph on Raimundus Lullus and his theological relation with Islam, addressing also his suggestions for dealing with the crusades while he kept proclaiming an openness for dialogue. Beyond investigating historical facts, I will ask: on what theological basis was such hermeneutical openness possible for Lullus? The prevailing soteriological paradigm ...
An intellectual genealogy of Islam in modern China: categorization, modernization, secularization Ghent University
This project will investigate how modern Chinese Islamic thinkers accommodated the novel category of “religion” and renegotiated the position of Islam in twentieth-century and contemporary China by studying the complex relations between the transition from empire to nation-state, the emergence of the discipline of religious studies, and the repositioning of spirituality over and against secular politics.
Making and Unmaking Muslim Identities. Symbolic Boundary Work and Islam in Flanders. University of Antwerp
Peaceful Encounters in premodern Islam. Theory and Practice of Diplomacy under the Mamluk Sultanate (1250-1517). University of Antwerp
Multi-epistemic negotiation in the study of Islam: Overcoming incommensurability between Western and Islamic approaches in Islamic studies in- and outside university in the Low Lands. KU Leuven
The emancipatory elasticity of islam: the relation between divine authority, cultural authenticity, and human emancipation in the political discourse of Egyptian muslim intellectuals Ghent University
My doctoral dissertation encompasses an inquiry into the current politicization of Islam, through the study of the role of authority, authenticity, and emancipation in the contemporary discourse of Muslim intellectuals in Egypt. I disclose theh political-semiotic process, a phenomenon which turns traditional, religious signs into vehicles for modern meanings, such as human rights, secularisation, democracy, and emancipation.